Zoology and wildlife conservation

Gold rush

Article Abstract:

Researchers are trying to use gold as a catalyst for the selective oxidation of hydrocarbons, which is very crucial in industrial petroleum-based chemical process. Hutchings and colleagues have showed that nanoparticles of gold can help to activate molecular oxygen under mild conditions along with speeding up oxidation reactions and further investigations on the effects of size and support material might reveal a far wider scope for catalysis by gold.

Nanocrystalline gold catalysts are used to provide tunable active catalysts for the oxidation of alkenes using air, with exceptionally high selectivity to partial oxidation products and significant conversions. The results show that gold catalysts have significant potential for selective epoxide formation rather than the competing allylic oxidation.